Why Students - and Often Teachers - Don't Reason Well

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Why Students - and Often Teachers - Don't Reason Well

Much of our reasoning, our intellectual modeling of the world, is done without mindfulness. It is small wonder, then, that often we don’t reason well. We expect students to learn to reason well without any awareness of the nature of reasoning, the elements of reasoning, or the criteria for assessing reasoning, without any knowledge of the logic of reasoning. Not surprisingly, our approach doesn’t work. In this tape, Richard Paul first documents common problems in student and teacher reasoning and assessment of reasoning. Then he explains some of the fundamental concepts and skills essential to good reasoning and how to teach for it.